AARP Urges Members to Push for Delay on AT&T 3G Sunset

AARP warned members of the risk of AT&T’s pending shuttering of its 3G network, and the later shutdown of Verizon’s and T-Mobile’s, in a Thursday webinar. Carmen Group’s Bill Signer, lobbyist for the Alarm Industry Communications Committee (AICC), asked viewers to contact the White House and ask the administration to pressure AT&T to delay the sunset. The California Public Utilities Commission would pass the buck to DOJ on Dish Network’s dispute with T-Mobile over its March 31 3G shutdown, under a proposed decision released Wednesday in docket A.18-07-11.

“One thing you all could do is call the White House,” Signer said. “Ask what is the president going to do to make sure that your personal emergency response system is going to work past the end of February.” AICC asked the National Economic Council and the Domestic Policy Council for help (see 2202020051), he said.

White House officials “are concerned, and they’re asking who is interested in this,” Signer said. AT&T is “pretty dug in,” he said. “The only way” a delay “is going to happen is if the White House intervenes, like they did with the [C-band] 5G aviation issue and tells AT&T that they have to do something here because peoples’ lives are at risk,” he said: “We’re working on it every day.” More than 500 AARP members joined the Zoom call.

Every other nation, except for Australia, Japan and Singapore is keeping its 3G networks alive through the end of the decade, Signer said. “If they can do that why can’t we?” he asked: Other countries “recognize that there are legacy devices, and they need to be supported.” AT&T said this week it needs to sunset the network to re-farm spectrum for 5G, and noted alarm companies and others had three years to get ready. Verizon plans to shutter its 3G network at the end of the year.

“The service that you rely on to operate your older phones, or your home alarm systems or your personal medical equipment, it could fail as soon as Feb. 22,” said Danielle Arigoni, director of AARP Livable Communities. It also extends to connected features like vehicle SOS systems, she said. “It sounds dramatic because it really is,” she said.

Arigoni warned that devices don’t contain a label saying they're 3G, and people have to ask questions. “Assume that any devices that you purchased before 2019 could be impacted,” she said. Personal emergency response systems used by the elderly pose a special problem, she said: “Those truly are lifelines for people. … We don’t want to take any risks that those are not going to be functioning when you need them.”

“Everybody is using technology today,” said Tom Kamber, executive director of AARP affiliate Older Adults Technology Services. What makes the 3G sunset “so challenging is how much people don’t know,” he said: “You can’t know exactly whether the device is 3G. There’s not a big label. … Then it’s not really clear what devices are affected.” A lot more kinds of devices will be affected than people realize, he said: “These are primarily things that people use in emergencies, so they may not tell you they’ve stopped working because you haven’t pushed the button.”

The CPUC could vote March 17 on the draft by Administrative Law Judge Karl Bemesderfer to deny Dish’s April 28, 2021, petition to modify the state commission’s April 2020 T-Mobile/Sprint OK. “Neither T-Mobile nor DISH can unilaterally decide what constitutes reasonable notice from T-Mobile to DISH before T-Mobile shuts down the CDMA network,” the ALJ wrote. “DOJ, the agency that structured the Boost Divestiture, including the reasonable notice requirement, is the only entity that can state definitively whether the notice given by T-Mobile meets the reasonable notice requirement.” Bemesderfer’s draft would “find that it is appropriate to leave the determination of what constitutes reasonable notice of the proposed CDMA shutdown to the federal government.” Dish asked the CPUC in November not to use T-Mobile’s 3-month shutdown delay as a reason to deny the satellite company’s petition (see 2111040017). Dish and T-Mobile didn’t comment Thursday.